The Hatch

One of our favourite events of 2012 was the incredible Hop Farm Freak Week Festival, so we were really disappointed when we heard it wasn't returning. Fortunately - Tom Swift, the key designer at Hop Farm, has taken many of his ideas from the event and opened two stand alone attractions - Pitch Black in Kent and The Hatch at Harlow Playhouse in Essex.

The build up to the show begins in the foyer of the theatre, where a TV screen warned us of the dangers of entering The Hatch. When the door opened, we were greeted by a man in overalls and a hard hat, obviously one of the maintenance team. He told us the story of finding the hatch and about the strange circumstances surrounding it’s discovery, warning us that once inside there was no turning back and no rescue.

We were directed down a corridor away from the hatch entrance and asked to get some overalls on as it's dirty and wet down the service tunnels. We got our first jump, as the man behind the coat check window leaped out and shouted at us, and then they broke the news that we had to go through in pairs or alone. Fortunately there were two of us!

Once we were in our overalls we went back to our friend in the hard hat who gave us more dire warnings and tales of doom and gloom, describing a terrible event when 6 schoolgirls went into the storm drains just as a flash flood hit, and only one came out, their bodies never discovered. It was then our time to enter the drains ourselves and once in the tunnel, the door slammed loudly behind us. We started making our way through the maze, which was constructed of heavy wooden boards with 'windows' set at intervals showing tanks of water with bodies floating in. The first 'drowned girl' came crawling towards us fairly quickly, going nose to nose with the one at the front, and there the experience really began - crawling around a dimly lit maze with dead girls around every corner!Just when we thought we'd found the exit, making our way down a ladder to what looked like freedom, it turned out we still had the worst part to go! Another, lower level of tunnels awaited us, getting progressively darker and darker, with giggling ghost girls crawling around all over the place. It was horrifying and we were starting to panic that we wouldn't actually get out until we finally crawled into a well-lit dead end, with a girl directing us inside from behind the door. As we waited there wondering whether to turn around, a hole opened up in a false wall and we were pulled to safety by a group of workmen.

We really enjoyed The Hatch it was a great set, the girls were brilliant and creepy and it was undeniably one of the more interesting mazes we've done. Well done to Tom for resurrecting the maze from Hop Farm and taking it to a new level in Harlow.

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